Rio Dulce and back to Guate

The next morning we caught another lancha up the river to Rio Dulce, a yacht-encrusted and rather dingy place situated around a major river crossing. We made our way up to the Litegua station and had just enough time to hit up a Dispensa for sustenance before our on-time (yep, you read right) departure!

We made it back to the behemoth Guatemala City just in time for rush hour. While mom used the bathroom, I found us a cab driver that looked like he meant business. The next half hour is a jumble in my memory of drivers blaring their horns and sprinting around one-another through red lights and passing on sidewalks. Our driver was no exception, even taking us through a Burger King parking lot to cut a corner at a busy intersection.

We checked into my usual airport-area digs for one last night before Mom was whisked away to the land where I long to be.

Finca Tatin & Ak'tenamit

Finca Tatin, up the river where we went turned out to be a little piece of paradise. I was reachable only by river and forest trail and for about 150Q a night (roughly twenty bucks) we could stay in a room with a shower and electricity for three hours a night. The place consisted of a main "lodge" area set near the water line and raised above a riparian area teeming with tiny crabs, turtles, and even jymungous banana spiders!

That morning we rented a kayak and paddled up some gorgeous waterfront to Ak'tenamit, an impressive little live-in school nestled into an alcove along a fork off the main river. At the dock we were greeted by a guide who showed us all throughout the place and described it to us in relative detail. I kept hearing and observing some impressive aspects that reflected what I consider very progressive and egalitarian views (students are required to provide support to their community before graduating, students are allowed to work in if unable to pay tuition in money) mixed in with what I have begun to interpret as rather conservative traditional Mayan philosophy (girls housed in separate village from boys, men most often in positions of authority. The tour was as much a cultural experience as it was a lesson in Mayan autonomy.

After a nap back at the finca, we tried in vain to work our way up to a hot springs near the water on the main river. We did however manage to amble our way up a quite hidden stream that leads to a community a few scant yards back from the main water front. Finding it not to be the hot springs, we doubled back and paddle the arduous kayak journey back to the Finca where dinner and jovial conversation awaited us before bed.

To the coast

After another hectic travel vignette involving a familiar microbus and a relatively luxurious four-hour Pullman we found ourselves in dirty, bustling Puerto Barrios. After bearing a barrage of taxi drivers and getting some cash we hauled our stuff to the local dock to wait for a lancha. After enough people had arrived to fill one, we took off across the bay to Livingston.

While we waited in Livingston for a lancha down a river, we met a girl and her mother who was visiting her. It turned out the girl, Melissa, was working on her thesis conducting a study on the effects of fair trade on a nearby co-op that produces women's handicrafts. Her mother was quite well-traveled and had sent both Melissa and her sister on foreign exchange in high school. She was very involved with the Rotary Club and regaled us with interesting information about the organization; a thing I will be certain to check into when I get home.

After a rather shy group dinner, sleep was a welcome repose from buses and boats.

The Copan Ruins

It was intoxicating for me returning to Copan after so many years. Watching the place unfold before me as watery memories crept from the structures and from the very earth. Honduras has proven easy to forget but difficult to put completely out of my mind. I feel that when I went there I perhaps took the course of my life into my own hands in a way that I seldom had before or have since. It fills me with curiosity to think of going back to La Esperanza although time isn't very forgiving; we can never truly go back. Only to the same place in a different time.

Our tour guide, it seemed to me, was very listo; he had taught himself English apparently by simply guiding tours. He stumbled along in English about his visit to Denmark and his anthropologist brother but did little to bring the ruins to life the way I have seen a good guide do. After our ruins tour we wandered off onto a free nature trail at the ruins' edge that took us through a shady glade with raised trail and standing water breeding mosquitoes and all other kinds of diverse rain forest life.

Copan isn't quite the sequestered, wild place Tikal has become through the efforts of the Guatemalan government. While signs of wilderness are everywhere, especially in many birds and butterflies and the variety of trees at the park, one doesn't sense that the only thing keeping the jungle at bay is the light of day.

Copan

After a lazy day of Mom's trip-planning and Charlie's web-conferencing we finally had a meeting of the minds as to how to spend Mom's remaining time in the country. I think Mom felt a little more at ease once she had a plan.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn and off for the eye-rattling seat-gripping three-and-a-half our bus to Antigua. Once there, we were churned out of the bus's human conveyor belt, luggage and all on the edge of Antigua. We hauled all our luggage to the corner of town and worked tour-booker lane until we had secured a ride to Copan Ruinas, Honduras for sixty quetzales apiece or about eighteen bucks total.

I don't know how we managed the five-ish brutal hours between Antigua and Copan, but somehow we found ourselves sipping cocktails near a room we rented in a family-run place preparing ourselves for the ancient adventure to come.

Atitlan: The Return

In Panachel, the sun was shining and the lancha (ferry boat) operators were charging tourists the same as locals. Our lancha took us to the general dock for Santa Cruz La Laguna and then was even kind enough to drop us off at the private dock of our intended hotel.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Charming and orderly: our German-run hotel"][/caption]

I have to nod to Brenda on this one for taste in scenery. The place was lush. Unfortunately, it wasn't open on account of the sawdust and noise from their ongoing construction. We ambled down the path along the lake until we saw another sign, 'Arco de Noe' (Noah's Arc). Upon checking the place out, we discovered it was a comely little eco-nest amid impeccable native landscaping. We decided to spend the night there and soon found ourselves dining by candlelight with a pair of cosmopolitan English 20-somethings and a non-couple from Belgium.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="I sit in the doorway to our room"][/caption]

In the morning we bid farewell to our fine hostel-mates and stringent German hosts. After a hike to a nearby village on the austere hillside along the lake, our next stop was Enlaceland.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Mom likes coffee (Standing next to a coffee plant)"][/caption]

Back to Santa Cruz (Happy Birthday, Mom!)

The morning we woke up in Nebaj it was Mom's birthday! Having had no debit card (and thus no disposable cash) before Mom's arrival, I wasn't very prepared. I had had to sneak away during the night to a place labeled "regalos" (gifts) only to find it full of toy cars and things like cheap clocks and busts of Irish setters (wtf?). I had finally decided on some fake flowers in a plastic pot (the real deal would have been impossible to find at that hour) and an umbrella (think 'useful'). On behalf of Mark I got her some playing cards so she could make me play cribbage with her on her birthday.

Despite my bleek birthday offerings, Mom was gracious and seemed pleased with my gifts and my in-bed coffee service. After a breif foray into a traveling retail show at the local auditorium we hopped a brimming microbus (designed for 12 and carrying about 24) and headed home. Back in Quiche we webbed it up and cribbaged it up until going to be early.

Nebaj

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Nebaj in town"][/caption]

After some reading in a guide book and a bit of wrangling, Mom convinced me to go with her as she satisfied her curiosity about Santa Cruz's smaller neighbor, Nebaj. Situated in a dramatic setting about two and a half hours North, I admit I was glad to see it. With each little jump from home base, you get a bit more of the big picture.

After passing through Sacapulas the next hour or so was pure ascent! I don't think we lost a meter of altitude until we could see the town about half an hour away from atop a high ridge. From there, it was all downhill until we arrived at the bus terminal about three blocks off the central square. After a bit of wandering we found a hotel on the route out of town toward Chajul and, after getting a room, set out for a hike in the dreary waning daylight.

After following a dirt road along an ever-growing creek for about an hour we came across a series of picturesque waterfalls punctuated by breathtaking pastoral hillscape and culminating in perhaps a three-story waterfall set in a cornfield. Idyllic.

Holy Cross II

Somehow, after the prior day's bus adventure Mom was itching for more. Not I. She seemed dead set on seeing the entire country in fifteen days. Most of our second day consisted of a prolonged negotiating process whereby I tried to convince her not to try to do too much and she tried to convince me to get out and see Guatemala. Having failed to set up a Friday web meeting with Andy, Enlace's founder, I managed to check my email at a net cafe in town and learned that he wants to shoot for Thursday or Friday. I was glad to find this would buy us more time in Santa Cruz since it wouldn't be reasonable to try and go across the country and back before then. Besides, I wanted to take up Rosaura on her offer to cook us a meal one day.

At Enlace, strangely enough, there was no internet in either of the offices, yet the classroom mysteriously possessed high-speed access. More administrative cutbacks? Nice of them to tell me...

After food shopping some more and touring a bit of the city, it was back to the house for dinner and sleep.

Holy Cross

There's really no describing the bus ride from Antigua to Santa Cruz Del Quiche, so I didn't try. I just let Mom experience it for herself. I think a lot about Guatemala becomes clear after winding down into and up out of gorge after gorge and negotiating landslide after landslide while clinging seatbealtless to the backrest in front of you. I think she may have begun to see why I don't really do a lot of traveling here.

After dropping off our things at the house and going shopping for food, we payed a brief visit to Enlace and headed home. Mom set to work cooking dinner while I took a nap. Around 7:15, Brenda and pals (two of them) arrived on our doorstep after Brenda failed to meet with her new intended landlady. Luckily, they had already eaten and Mom's delicious chicken and beat greens were (almost) all mine!

Around nine Brenda, her friends Nadia and Joel, and Mike and I went to the birthday party of one of Mike's students. It turned out to just be the student and a handful of friends hanging out and drinking rum and coke. Brenda was feeling sick and since its best to have an escort in Quiche at night, I opted to walk her and Nadia home. Mom was still awake when I got back. I guess Mike and Joel stayed until the wee hours.

Pacaya: The Return

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="Hello, old friend"][/caption]

The trip to Pacaya is much nicer when your bus doesn't keep breaking down. In the morning as we waited for our bus, my heart sank when I saw the same white bus and organizer lady as the one Lori and I had had. To my relief, however, she was beckoning a couple about a block behind us. The "bus" we got was really more of a van, and it operated without a hitch. On it there was myself and Mom, a couple from the Netherlands, and about a dozen Israelis.

The hike up was about as challenging as I remember, except when we reached the talus and barren black boulder portion, we took the better-traveled upper trail to a different part of the lava flow. The guide, it turned out, was a cousin of the guide Lori and I had gotten. I was the only person on the tour who spoke Spanish and thus wound up conversing with him quite a bit and even translating for him some of his explanations to other tourists.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Mom stands in front of recently cooled lava"][/caption]

The lava was every bit as scorching hot, but this time our fellow tourists had brought marshmallows to roast in the heat. I chided myself for not remembering. Also this time there were little dogs that had followed the first group up and followed us, the last group, down patiently and diligently begging all the way, their claws filed down to nubs by the volcanic rock.

Antigua

After a satisfying night’s sleep we set out again for Antigua on the same road. By the time we reached it this morning they had set up a detour converting the one-way road out of town into a two-way while they cleared the route in. All along there were visible signs of having cleared great boulders off the road. Evidently, the jungle doesn’t take well to being developed.

At Casa En Familia, we were escorted to our room and then to the Laundromat next door where a friendly lady smilingly weighed in my enormous laundry bag at twenty-nine pounds. After that we proceeded to wander the streets of Antigua which, even on the third visit, proved every bit ask oddly confusing and easy to get lost in.

After a meal, a nap, and trip to Bodegangonas we were ready for the 5:30 awakening and trip to Pacaya the following morning.

Mom Pays a Visit

Mom arrived at about 10:30 p.m. in good spirits and happy to see her son. Given her flight's delay and my arrival in town just at nightfall (a precaution), I waited a total of four hours at Arrivals to receive her. For some reason the guy checking passports at the door to Departures decided to ask for a boarding pass (unlike last time) and since I didn't have one, I had to wait downstairs and forgo dinner.

Upon greeting Mom, I called for a cab and got a busy signal. We had no choice but to take our chances with the taxis offered at the airport, but I had seen several people accept rides in these and the one guy running the airport taxi hustle made me relatively confident. I don't know why, but this time I had decided to skip the hostel by the airport and go straight to Antigua.

About ten kilometers from Antigua we were turned around by police. A landslide had blocked the main passage in and out of town. We could go around via Chimaltenango but it was nearly twice the distance and would run us another fifty bucks in the cab. I decided to cut our losses and scoot to my old standby, Hostal Los Volcanes.

Arriving at the hostel we were distressed to discover what money we had was yet not enough to pay for the trip to within 10k of Antigua and back. Not knowing what to do, we opted to stash our bags in our room and have the driver take us to an ATM. Luckily upon hearing our plight, the guy running Hostal Los Volcanes decided to loan us what we needed and save us the trip.

Sleep came easy.

El Remate

After a long, lazy morning we decided it was time to move on from Flores. Mike had told me about a sleepy little town called El Remate about an hour from Flores which is the closes town to Tikal on the lake. After the hike with bags in tow to Santa Elena, we baked in the sun on a street corner until the nearest colectivo, a shabby old charter bus, came by to take us the rest of the way. To our confusion, it dropped at a seemingly remote crossroads called Ixlu. Not knowing what to do, we asked the nearest passerby which way to El Remate and he pointed up the road.

Is we followed the road in the throbbing mid-day sun, a guy of maybe twenty came along on a bike, and began to engage me in conversation. I normally just ignore kids like this, but he seemed genuine, so I humored him. It turned out his family ran a hotel on their property and it only cost 30 quetzales a night (about four dollars) per person. Not really knowing what to expect, we decided to take a look. The family property was set on a hillside on literally the first street as you get into town. The "hotel" was just three rooms made from raw wood obviously procured from the surrounding forest covered by a thatched roof. Not wanting to keep looking and, at least in my case, wooed by the price, we decided to stay.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="430" caption="Not bad for four bucks a night"][/caption]

Next thing, we tore off our clothes and hopped in the lake. It felt ssooo goood to go for a swim. The water was lukewarm and we had a little dock to ourselves. It turned out the guy, Juan Carlos was also the in charge of the town's tourist information office. After lunch at a touristy place with a tempting pool, Beth went back to the room and Lori and I wrangled Juan Carlos to help us rent a kayak. We launched in the pouring rain but by the time we were a good distance out in the lake it let up and we were in a blue paradise with miles of lake out on the horizon.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="430" caption="View from our room in El Remate"][/caption]

That night we decided to try a restaurant recommended in one of our tour books. A road off the main route took us along hotel and restaurant row for what seemed like forever before we finally arrived. The place looked closed, but when we rang the bell they beckoned us in. After sitting at a table and reading the menu, Lori and Beth decided they weren't pleased. I made up a cursory excuse and we absconded with our heads down. Where we decided to eat, there turned out to be several very drunk men who made a scene and seemed to take forever finally to leave, loitering loudly and drunkenly with their motor bikes in the entryway.

Back at our room, it started to rain and to leak through our thatched roof. Luckily I had a poncho which I draped over the mosquito net before drifting off to sleep.

ARCAS

When I awoke we still had a few hours remaining of daylight and Lori wasn't fixing to waste them. She had read in one of our guidebooks about ARCAS, a wildlife refuge across the lake from us that houses animals rescued from the black market and she rallied us to go see it. As it was only accessible by boat, we hired a boatman for about thirty dollars to take us there and back.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption=""Excuse me, kind sir. Might I trouble you for a banana?""][/caption]

After we arrived at the ARCAS visitor center, were we escorted around to various cages by a pretty uninformative, gentle-seeming man. First stop was the monkeys. I don't know why, but there is something innately funny about monkeys. As soon as we arrived at they came right up to us, even sticking their hand through the cage like little beggars. After that was an assortment of birds including one that looks like a turkey and which I hear winds up on local menus from time to time. Next was my favorite; a kind of boar called a "chancho de monte" which means literally "mountain pig". I found these funny as well. They had tiny little feet that the placed ever so delicately when they walked. Judging by their demeanor, one might have mistaken them for royalty.

Next came something I will never forget. I real live jaguar mere feet away. As we walked up, it was in the far corner from us and it began to check us out. As we talked to the guide and asked questions, it stood and began to pace a little, its huge paws spreading out against the soil on the floor of its cage. Then without warning it lunged at Beth. She about jumped out of her skin. I would have too if it had been me. Judging by the rate at which it covered the distance between it and ourselves, we probably would have been toast if not for the cage. "It really wants to hunt," remarked Lori.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Hungry for BETH!"][/caption]

After the jaguar came more birds and number of deer. The deer we clearly quite tame, following us along the trail and scratching their antler against the cage. There was one deer that had to be kept apart from the others because they kept picking on it. We learned that the animals are quarantined at ARCAS and then released after forty days. Lori and I both wondered how much of a head start they give deer before releasing jaguars.

After about an hour and a half at the reserve we said goodbye and went to the dock where our boat was waiting. We trolled back to Flores with the waning daylight painting pale blue and pink swirls on the lake dotted every few seconds with a flash of lightning.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Lori and Beth on the boat"][/caption]

Tikal

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="431" caption="Tikal at sunrise"][/caption]

It wasn't until we went to set our alarm the night before that I learned we had arranged to leave for the ruins at 3:15 in the morning the next day. We set out amidst barking howler monkeys and chirping cicadas down the four-kilometer trail to Tikal's tallest structure, Temple Four, to catch the sunrise from its top. It turns out they were only allowing tour groups to do this for another ten days. After that they were to adopt UNESCO hours of opening and closing.

Something you have to realize about a place like Tikal is that it really is an ancient city. Many archeological sites, it seems, are more on the scale of a town. We were hiking at a good clip for about an hour and a half just to get to the middle of it. Because Guatemala's rain forest is protected, they've really just cleared off the structures and left trees and brush to grow around which gives the park a unique feel. The only place you really gain a sense for what it might have looked like in its day is in the central plaza where you kind of step out of the pyramid-strewn jungle at the end of the tour, into a grass-covered open field completely surrounded by structures and two stories off the ground. Incredible.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="431" caption="Lori checks out the view at the end of the tour. The tower in the upper left is where the picture at the beginning of this post was taken from."][/caption]

Lori and Beth and I held up pretty well throughout the five-hour tour, and even did better than most with our backpack full of goodies we had procured the evening before in a fit of wisdom. But by the time eleven o'clock rolled around under the glaring sun, I could tell that morale had begun to dwindle and we were all quite ready to go. Too bad for us, we had to sit in the bus aisle. Poor Beth kept nodding off with no place to lay her head. If I had known it would come to this I would have insisted we book with a different agency.

By the time we got back to our hotel I was so spent and sleep-deprived that I went right to sleep.

Flores

Once again at our hostal in Guatemala City, Lori and I awoke at 5:00 a.m., met Beth at arrivals and went right upstair to departures. In a stroke of trip-planning genius Lori had booked our flight to Flores for just about exactly as long after Beth's arrival as it takes to get through the check-in line and through security, and to walk out to the gate. It wasn't long after we sat down to wait, that we heard the first boarding call.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="The lake from our room"][/caption]

Fourty-five minutes later we were in Tikal's "gateway" city of Flores. A dense little of node of hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and tour agencies on an island in Lake Petén Itzá. After stashing our bags at the hotel we learned that we had five hours before our room was available. Not being one to sit on her laurels, Lori promptly found us a cave and we set off through Flores' dirtier big sibling Santa Elena, past a power plant and down a dusty dirt road .

An oldish gentleman with decent English tooks us on a rather unscientific tour of the cave, mostly pointing out mineral formations that resembled things like horses and women. He was careful to point out all the photo-ops and even made sure to ask us if each picture had come out okay. Some highlights included seeing live bats and scrambling on our bellies through narrow passages. My favorite part was when he turned out all the lights and it was just pitch black. For a while we even stood in perfect silence and in perfect darkness.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Climbing into a cavern"][/caption]

Santa Cruz del Quiche

Sunday we had our first opportunity to sleep in. After lounging around like layabouts until about ten it was time to hit the road. Though I would soon regret it, I decided it was time for Lori to see a little peice of real Guatemala. Instead of finding some kind of Shuttle up north, I opted to take her on the chicken busses. First from Antigua to Chimaltenango on Route 1, then very bumpily from Chimal to Los Encuentros and finally along the ridge from Encuentros to Santa Cruz.

Upon arriving at the volunteer house and decompressing a bit, we decided to hit an ATM and have a bit of a look around. But when Lori went to get her debit card, it became clear that there was a problem. Lori's wallet had been gone through, with her debit card and two credit cards missing. Strangely enough, the theif had left behind more than a hundred quetzales of cash as well as her passport.

Though we hurried to Enlace to block the card, when she accessed her account it appeared it had already been drained. Her available balance was a little more than eight dollars. Upon calling her bank it indeed turned out that someone had spent large sums at McDonald's, Radio Shack and a home improvement store. They told her that if she wanted a chance to get her money back, she would have to go to make a police report. When we told this to my coworkers at Enlace, they laughed. The last place anyone in Guatemala wants to go for anything is the police.

Not knowing what to do, we nevertheless arranged for Pablo to go with us the next day to the police office in hopes of filing a report. Upon arrival at the office the next day, we had the tremendous luck of bumping into a city council member who periodically works with Jesus and Pablo on City Hall's various web projects. He made a couple phone calls and within minutes he had Santa Cruz's Asistur (federal tourist assistant) officer at Enlace with us taking down information.

It turns out when you make a police report, they file something called a denuncia with the Public Ministry. With Edy from Asistur, we were able to bypass the police completely and go directly to the the Public Ministry. After what seemed like hours of waiting and then hours of translating and hashing out the details in writing, Lori's misfortune was now a matter of public record and we had an official document ratifying our claim that the latest charges to her card were fraudulent.

Though I would have liked to have spent more time in Santa Cruz, we had to be at the airport the next morning to greet Beth, so with just enough time to hit Gautemala City before dark, we were on the bus there.